09 Nov Majority Rule

I didn’t like Hillary Clinton as a candidate for president. Among other things, I felt that she and the national leaders in control of the Democratic Party considered her as practically entitled to be their nominee because it was her royal turn.

I voted for her anyway, though, because I didn’t think Donald Trump was at all qualified to be president, for a thousand reasons. Not the least of which involves the fact that my youngest son is Hispanic and Trump practically painted a target on the backs of Hispanic Americans almost from the day he announced his candidacy.

But now it’s President Trump, and he won decisively. It would be easy to give myself over to despair and blame and even anger, as I see some among the press punditry already are doing. But that’s not the American way, and I hope the Democrats and other independents will resist the temptation.

For the first time that I can remember, the national Republican elite lost control of the party to their rank-and-file, and in the process they won control of the presidency, the Senate and the Supreme Court, and retained control of the House. The national Democratic elite fought off a game attempt by their rank-and-file to take control of that party, and in maintaining elite control, the Democrats managed to lose every branch of government. Could it be there’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere?

So now the Republicans will have to end their strategy of working to defeat every idea the Democrats have. Now the Republicans are actually going to have the ability to come up with ideas of their own and pass them into law. And it will be up to President Trump and the rank-and-file who elected him to watch closely and make sure congressional Republicans’ ideas involve more than exempting wealthy donors from taxes.

For at least a time, I am setting aside my doubts and cynicism in order to allow Donald Trump the chance to prove me wrong and operate to the best of his ability for all Americans. After listening to his acceptance speech, I believe this is possible. To the extent that the United States has succeeded as a nation, this success is due in large part to the acceptance of the concept of majority rule, and the peaceful transition of power.

In the spirit of working to heal partisan wounds and give the guy a chance, I took the small step of removing my previous blog post, in which I expressed disdain for Mr. Trump. It’s not much, but it’s a sincere gesture. Regardless of the fact that congressional Republicans did just the opposite to our current president for the past eight years, I am wishing the coming President Trump achieves great things in office, on behalf of all of us.